Wi-Fi security: We have winners!

On Friday, I posted two questions that had been emailed to me by Kurt Huneke regarding Wi-Fi security. One involved the availability of products to help keep Wi-Fi connections safe, and the other dealt with free, Wi-Fi-based Internet access offered by a condo complex into which Kurt is moving.

I’d already responded to Kurt with my own replies, but I thought it would be interesting to see what advice the members of the TechBlog community would offer. The resulting discussion was excellent, and many of you had great responses for Kurt.

Here’s an edited version of how I originally responded:

If you connect to an encrypted page over Wi-Fi, you should be OK, and most mainstream sites that deal with commerce or personal information are encrypted. You can tell if a page is encrypted by the appearance of a lock icon in the address bar (it may be in other locations on different browsers). . . . There are some things you can do to always make sure you’re connecting over Wi-Fi securely, including using a VPN connection, but these can be difficult for a non-savvy user to configure and may cost money if you don’t have one available through your workplace. Google “VPN service” to see more.

If the condo’s setup is securely configured, you might be OK using it. However, I’d recommend using your own connection. Yes, it’s more secure, but a shared connection in a community like that also can be very slow when everyone’s trying to use it at once. Having your own setup is both faster and more secure.

Many of your responses were spot-on, and Kurt would do well to read and consider them all. But I said I’d pick two of the best, and I liked the ones from Dr. Dave and Tex. They’ll be receiving signed copies of my book, Switching to a Mac – No Problem. Email me with a snail-mail address, guys.